Raise in monthly fees by private schools
Every year private schools in Pakistan raise their fees without any notice or resistance from parents and helpless parents have to oblige the unjustified demands from private school management without any protest. This trend is continued without any resistance for many years and according to a figure quoted by a TV channel during the last five years, private schools have increased their fees by over 300 per cent, on average. This startling raise in the fees, when the annual inflation rate in the country is now in the single digit is really mind-boggling.
The main question is why the private schools are so free and liberal that whenever they want to extract money from parents, no state organization/department is questioning them. According to the law in Sindh (Private Educational Institutions (Regulation & Control) Ordinance 2001 and its amended rules 2005) private schools can increase their monthly fees only by 5% per annum after prior permission from the Education department. But here there is no accountability for these schools and they unilaterally increase their fees without prior permission. This is the worst form of monopoly.
The main reason for the current mess in the private schools, which were earlier confined to cities only but are now spread over all parts including small villages, is bad governance on part of the government and lack of accountability. The state’s oblivion attitude towards discharging its basic duties of provision of education to its citizens has given courage to the private schools' managers who run their institutions like the corporate sector -- to earn profits. They offer franchises for the use of the names of schools in different parts of the country. Some big names use multiple names. City School has another chain of schools The Smart Schools, and The Beaconhouse Schools have their chains of schools in the name of The Educators.
Unfortunately, the state is non-existent in this part of the world and education and health sectors have been taken over by the mafias, who not only mint windfall profits from their businesses establishment-like schools or hospitals, but have created a cartel-like situation, in which they are not answerable to any authority. They force the parents to pay the fees, otherwise they remove the children from their schools. There is no forum to file a complaint against these schools. Once I tried to lodge a complaint against a school and visited the office of the Director of Inspection/Registration of Private Institutions located at the Government Degree College for Women off Shahrah-i-Liaquat in Urdu Bazaar Karachi, but failed to receive any redress from it.
The law “Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2013” binds private schools to reserve 10 per cent of admissions for the poor/disadvantaged and terrorism-affected children, but no private school is providing free of cost education to any children from the down-trodden sections of the society.
The current protest campaign by parents in Karachi is a welcome sign and a ray of hope, but unfortunately, it is restricted to only posh localities where parents are already and willingly pay exorbitant fees ranging from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000 per month. The resistance started from the students’ parents of Generations School in the North Nazimabad area which has raised 25% fee this year. This triggered the anti-school fee raise campaign in other posh areas.
In fact, all the private schools increase their fees from 10-20 per cent every year and they do not face any resistance. Besides this raise, they collect a handsome amount in the name of Annual Charges. Civil society must come forward and resist such injustices to common people. Common people (including me) have stopped sending their children to government schools because of the bad conditions of the state-run schools and lack of teachers and many other problems. The only solution to this is the drastic improvement in government-run schools and the discouragement of private schools.
